They can take down statues, change team names, paint BLM on the streets, kneel on TV, wear Kinte cloth on the Congressional floor.
They can send out white privilege acknowledgments, hire a few new Black people, talk about reparations.
They can allocate funds from their police budget to community programs, they can stand before us and apologize for slavery.
They can do all of these things and more, but what does it really accomplish? What change do each and every one of these performative acts truly cost them?
NOTHING!
They give up what they can spare, what's easy, what doesn't make a significant dent in their wallets because, in the end, that's what it comes down to.
MONEY!
Hundreds of years ago slavery was an economic powerhouse, for god sakes they fought a war for it!
Once that war was lost, they weren't exactly willing to let their commodities go. So they created laws out of thin air, laws that ensured their economic superiority, and what they thought was the enslavement of our souls.
Then they realized that still wasn't enough to break us so they decided to literally, break us. But they never counted on us rising above the fray.
But they were stubborn and determined to continue to build this country off of our broken backs, so they followed us when we fled in terror to northern cities. They managed to devise new ways for us to pay for their loss and pay for our freedom.
On and on it went, we circled each other, each waiting for the other to break. But it never came. They continued to hunt us in new ways and we continued to evade them by refusing to give in to their oppression.
And through all of that, we made it to this moment right now. Intact, brilliant, beautiful and proud.
They have become used to placating us with bobbles and bright shiny objects in the form of apologies, diversity hiring, Black history month, MLK day BUT.......... that's all they are willing to give.
So this time when we have them on the ropes, we don't give up, we hold their feet to the fire. We force them to embrace the changes as they forced us to embrace our enslavement. This time we won't let them win.
We want real change:
Defund the police
Prosecute murderous cops
Celebrate cops who step forward for us
Remove whole department heads who refuse to change
Prosecute Karens who make false police calls (IT'S FUCKING AGAINST THE LAW!!!!!!)
Stop hyper sexualizing our girls and women
Stop criminalizing our Men simply for existing
Stop giving disproportionate jail sentences based upon our skin color
Start listening to Black people in the hospital when they tell you somethings wrong
Stop teaching POC to hate us based upon your need to pit us against each other
Let us walk down the street unaccosted
Let us FUCKING BREATHE!!!!!!!!!!
But most of all, above anything else, if you can do nothing else...............
See us for human beings that we are - No better and No worse than you -
I am literally begging you with tears in my eyes to LET US LIVE